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There are two astronauts stuck on the International Space Station as they await a return trip aboard Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, but one of them is generating an especially international wave of anxiety: Several major Indian newspapers have run stories with headlines that go something like Sunita Williams is stuck in space.
The Starliner was originally supposed to return from its first crewed mission a week ago, but the spacecraft has remained docked at the International Space Station as NASA and Boeing try to get to the bottom of several helium leaks that delayed its launch. On Tuesday, the return date was pushed from June 22 to June 26.
In 2006, Williams became the second woman of Indian descent in space when she flew to the International Space Station aboard the space shuttle Discovery. Born to an Slovenian mother and Indian father and raised in Massachusetts, Williams has continually affirmed her Indian heritage. When she flew into space aboard the Starliner earlier this month, NBC News reports that she brought samosas with her. On an previous mission in 2012, she celebrated India’s Independence Day by unfurling the country’s flag aboard the International Space Station.
She is a beloved figure both in the United States, where she is the subject of several children’s books, and in India, where a 2013 visit drew huge crowds of young girls excited to meet her.
But part of the concern for her wellbeing comes from what happened to the first space-bound woman of Indian descent. In 2003, fellow Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla died in the Columbia disaster, when the space shuttle disintegrated as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. Chawla and Williams had been close friends. Williams was undaunted as she prepared to make the same trip.
“We had trained a lot and I had confidence in the team that was rebuilding the system,” she said in a 2013 speech to students at India’s National Space Centre, according to the Times of India. “I had to continue Kalpana’s dream.”
Speaking in 2007, Wiliams recalled that first mission, when a computer crash threatened to disrupt the station’s positioning systems.
“We take spaceflight for granted, and it still is pretty darned dangerous,” Williams told reporters at Johnson Space Center in Houston, according to a Reuters report at the time. “We’re living in an environment that is not really friendly for humans. It’s a serious place and we’re doing serious business and serious science up here.”
-Vinamrata Chaturvedi contributed to this article.